Nov 15, 2005 05:44 AM
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(Updated Nov 15, 2005 05:52 AM)
This is a review about a unique personality and one of India’s greatest musical legends Ustad Bismillah Khan and not Ustad Amir Khan.I am sorry for this mixup......
Shehnai
The Shehnai is perhaps the most popular of all the instruments in Indian music because it sounds extremely sweet. It is an ancient wind instrument played all over India. It is played morning and evening at the time of prayer in most big temples, during holy festivals, and on all auspicious occasions. The sound of a Shehnai at once fills the atmosphere with a soothing sweetness and sublime peace. This small instrument, hardly two feet long, produces magic notes that hypnotize listeners.
Bismillah Khan Childhood
Bismillah Khan, the most outstanding and world-famous Shehnai player, has attained astonishing mastery over the instrument. The legendary Shehnai maestro, a man of tenderness, a man who believes in remaining private and who believes that musicians are supposed to be heard and not seen. The legend was born on 21 March 1916. His ancestors were court musicians in the princely state of Dumraon in Bihar and he was trained under his uncle, the late Ali Bux `Vilayatu’, a shehnai player attached to Varanasi’s Vishwanath Temple. It was Khan Sahib who poured his heart out into Raga Kafi from Red Fort on the eve of India’s first Republic Day ceremony. He spent his childhood in the holy city of Varanasi, on the banks of the Ganga, where his uncle was the official shehnai player in the famous Visvanath temple. It was due to this that Bismillah became interested in playing the Shehnai. At an early age, he familiarized himself with various forms of the music of UP, such as Thumri, Chaiti, Kajri, Sawani etc. Later he studied Khayal music and mastered a large number of ragas.
Bismillah Khan embodies in himself and his divine music the great efflorescence of a secular spiritual heritage. A tradition which finds no contradiction in the ustad, a devout muslim, playing the shehnai every morning at the Kashi Balji temple with the same piety with which he reads his namaz.
If you are going to Ustad Bismillah Khan’s concert for a single line melody meditation, then you are mistaken. No, it is not easy to close your eyes and meditate while Ustad is performing. He does not give any chance to a yogi to muse nor supports a delirious dreamer. He demands your full attention. He is a yogi himself who is creating the vibrations of a grand sadhana.You have to be completely awake while listening to him. You have to be mentally prepared to take such an enormous experience. A half hearted or a casual goer to a concert hall might fail to know him, truly. Actually, it is not the instrument – shehnai, it is Khan sahib who reverberates in a concert hall. No wonder that shehnai as an individual musical instrument was never played in classical music conference of India till Ustad Bismillah Khan appeared in the scene and it may not be played anymore as he would be gone. It is different thing that shehnai would be played as usual at auspicious occasion but will there be anyone after Ustad sahib who will be able to open a music concert with his overpowering shehnai? Will there be anybody to bear the flag of the wizard of shehnai, Ustad Bismillah Khan? This question remains unanswered………
